My Dad always told me this quote, and over time I understood it as follows – “stick with what’s working, there is no reason to change”. Also, this harkened back to my Dad’s loyalty to just about anything and everyone he ever knew – (why get an iPhone when this nice grey brick Motorola from 1980 still works). I now get to use this same back-woods-country logic on my own kids, so they’ll enjoy the same rewarding hours of therapy I was able to enjoy after leaving home for college!
This quote came back to me this week when I saw all the news around Jay Leno leaving the tonight show and Conan O’Brien taking over, with a CNN poll showing that only 38% of us would continue to watch the tonight show with Conan as the new host. This seemed a little strange to me – So, where are the 62% of viewers really going to go? Is David Letterman all of a sudden going to pick up this huge market share?! I highly doubt it – most of us are creatures of habit and while we are more than willing to tell you we won’t keep watching, then Monday night at 11:30pm, 98.4% will probably still be tuning into the tonight show with Johnny Carson, I mean – Jay Leno, I mean - Conan O’Brien.
The only reason I bring this up here at FOT is this is no different than when you have a great leader leave your organization. I can think of multiple times in my career that I’ve worked for absolutely great leaders (no Ted you weren’t one of them – sorry for personal shout out, but I don’t want to leave any room for interpretation) and when they left, I didn’t leave because they left – unless they recruited me to come with them for more money, but I digress. We all like to think we are irreplaceable and the company couldn’t go on without us, but in the end, the company usually does go on quite fine without us – and many times gets better. It has taken many years to learn this. When I was late 20′s, I thought I was the man and the company couldn’t do anything without me.
Over the years, I’ve come to realize no matter what the company – good or bad – they all lived on just fine without me being a part of it. I’ve also seen these great leaders, I’ve worked for at one company, become very average leaders at new companies – same person, new environment and supporters. Great leaders don’t always translate from company to company – do you really feel like Steve Jobs could lead Microsoft as he has with Apple – or Phil Knight would do the same with Adidas as he is with Nike? I believe we tend to discount the relationship between great leader and company – and the company is a major part of the equation we tend to discount most.
So, be careful in believing your own press and don’t discount how you got to where you are – and by all means “Dance with the one that Brung Ya” as my Daddy would say.
NBC will do fine without Leno. I always found Leno skivvy in his attempt to be King of Late Night (If you read the Late Shift by Bill Carter, you know what I mean). Although you make a great point that no matter what, the company will do fine, unless you really screw it up like GM.
In your comparison to Leno, I have no idea how he got an audience since he was trailing Letterman in the ratings in the mid 90s until the Hugh Grant interview and that propel him to rule late night. Either the audience were very intrigue by Leno or they had millions of GE employees require to watch his show.
What would be the more interesting part is when Leno takes over the 10PM slot in the fall. Let’s see if that’s a risk or a reward and from the looks of it, it doesn’t look good…for both Leno and NBC.
The “Tonight Show” without Jay Leno is nothing. The comment from Tracy Tran was way off base. Have you ever watched Jay Leno? He was and is the only late night tv show I faithfully watched. I refuse to watch Conan, Jimmy Fallon, and whoever else the idiots at NBC thought could replace Jay. What a horribly stupid decision.